Tag: Captain America

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – Flash, Iron Man, Suicide Squad, Thor, Groo, Dune

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel revisits “Heroes Return” with discounts. DC drops a 750 book “MAX” sale with Flash, Superman and the Suicide Squad. In unannounced sales, we find Groo, Stranger Things, Dune and… Quentin Tarantino?

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Is That a Streaming Pun?

The Flash  Superman Y the Last Man

The DC to the MAX Sale runs through Monday, 7/15.

This is a large (750 items) and fairly wide-ranging sale, so it’s perhaps worth a bit of browsing time, but here are some highlights we noticed:

  • DMZ – Brian Wood / Riccardo Burchielli; During a second Civil War, an embedded reporter becomes stranded in the DMZ that Manhattan has become and promptly gets embroiled in local political/warlord scene.
  • The Flash (’59-’85) – The Silver Age volumes highlight this section
  • The Flash (’87 – ’09) – The prices on the Geoff Johns run are good.
  • The Flash (’16-’23) – Initially, Josh Williamson / Carmine Di Gianmenico. Later, Jeremy Adams / Roger Cruz
  • Hawkworld – Tim Truman leans into the science fiction side of the character in this excellent Hawkman reboot
  • Jonah Hex (’06 – ’11) – Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray write a very fun Western with what turns into a jaw dropping parade of artists like Darwyn Cooke, Paul Gulacy, Jordi Bernet, Russ Heath, Phil Winslade, Eduardo Risso and so on…
  • Rorschach – Tom King /Jorge Fornés; A very well done follow up to the ideas of Watchmen
  • Suicide Squad (’87-’92) – John Ostrander / Luke McDonnell / Geoff Isherwood; There’s been some comments lately about how Amanda Waller was a much more nuanced character in the original incarnation… and we’d have to agree. This is a classic.
  • Suicide Squad: Blaze – Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell; A darker than dark take on the Squad various DC mythos in this Black Label edition.
  • Superman  Vol. 1: Supercorp (2023-)- Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; The opening to the quite enjoyable current Superman run.
  • Superman/Batman (’03  – ’11) – Initially Jeph Loeb / Ed McGuinness; These double-volumes are a good value
  • Unstoppable Doom Patrol – Dennis Culver / Chris Burnham; First time discounted?
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra; The last man on Earth (and his monkey) navigates a dystopian landscape and tries to piece together what happened.

Come Again?

Iron Man: Heroes Reborn  Captain America Heroes Return

Marvel’s Heroes Reborn Sale runs through Monday, 7/15.

This is the 90s experiment when Marvel outsourced some of their titles to Image and then took them back. “Heroes Reborn” is the Image experiment and “Heroes Return” was when Marvel resumed production. Now, for our money, the gems here are from the “Heroes Return” period.

Heroes Reborn: The Return is the Peter David / Salvador Larroca tale that brings the heroes back to the “normal” Marvel Universe.

Iron Man: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection V. 1 has Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Sean Chen as the primary creative team, re-establishing shell head back in the Marvel Universe. You get some Mandarin, there’s a side trip with Captain America and MODOK. This collects the first portion of one of our favorite Iron Man periods.

And speaking of high points, this sale also has Captain America: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection,  which is the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run resuming. (It had just started, and was abruptly halted, for Heroes Reborn.) A little Hydra, a lost shield… that MODOK tale from Iron Man is also reprinted here (a shared Annual). It’s a solid run.

Fantastic Four: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection Vol. 1  takes a longer view of the Heroes Return timeframe than the other do. This was starts out with a Chris Claremont/Alan Davis run and ends up with an underrated Carlos Pacheco run. Essentially, Heroes Return is deemed to stop right before the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run.

Why the Kurt Busiek / George Perez Avengers run isn’t included here… that’s a good question. In some ways it was the flagship of the returning titles.

Marvel revisited it in ’21 with the minor Event Heroes Reborn, headlined by a Jason Aaron / Ed McGuinness miniseries.

The Image-produced Heroes Reborn titles were:

And, to be complete, it’s not in the sale for inexplicable reasons, but Heroes Reborn: Fantastic Four by Jim Lee & Brandon Choi.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Thor Modern Epic Collection White Widow

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced Indie Sales

Groo Meets Tarzan  Dune  Quentin Tarantino

Over at Dark Horse, everyone’s favorite stupid barbarian is on sale. Yes, that’s right… it’s Groo by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier! Yes, this includes Groo Meets Tarzan with Thomas Yeates.

Also from Dark Horse, the Stranger Things line of graphic novels.

Plus, further removed from the Direct Market:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America, Wolverine, Nightwing, What If? + More Unannounced Sales

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a huge Captain America sale for the Fourth of July. Plus, Wolverine and What If? get discounts from Marvel, Nightwing gets prices cut from DC and a bevy of unannounced sales and more Marvel “Maybe” Sales.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Super Soldier Sale

Captain America: The Secret Empire  Captain America: Man Without a Country  Captain America & the Falcon by Christopher Priest

The Marvel Captain America 4th of July Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

Seems like an appropriate call for the holiday.

There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved

So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? The current JMS relaunch isn’t even in the sale… and it takes things on more of an urban fantasy spin than you’re likely expecting, too.

Some recommendations? Absolutely.  And no Masterworks on sale this time. (Masterworks seem to be on sale less often in ’24 for whatever reason.)

For Silver/Bronze Age adventures,  “Captain America Lives Again“ catches the bulk of the early Lee/Kirby run. Jump ahead to “Hero or Hoax,” which you’re getting for the final arc, which begins the superlative Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era. “The Secret Empire” is the bulk of the Englehart/Buscema run. “The Man Who Sold The United States” wraps up Englehart/Buscema and includes Madbomb, the beginning of Jack Kirby’s return run that is way more timely than it should be in the age of social media outrage.

Jump ahead to “By Dawn’s Early Light,” which you’re looking at for the all too brief Roger Stern / John Byrne run.  The highlight of the J.M. DeMatties / Mike Zeck run is their wrap up with the Red Skull in “Sturm und Drang.”

“The Captain“ is the sequence from the Mark Gruenwald run where Steve Rogers loses the shield and his Captain America identity for a time. That’s the famous one. You might consider backing up a volume for “Justice is Served,” which introduces the Super-Patriot and leads into the more famous sequence a bit.

Once you get past around the middle of the Gruenwald run, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker, first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.

More Wolverine!

Wolverine: Logan  The Incredible Hulk - And Now the Wolverine  Wolverine Vs. The Punisher

The Marvel Wolverine & The Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 7/15.

Yes, we’re getting more Wolverine sales as the movie approaches. We’ll probably get more Deadpool sales, too.

This is as eclectic an assortment of Wolverine comics as you could think up. Some miniseries and one-shots. Some compilations. Some shorter runs. Let’s start out by picking out some of the highlights in list format.

What’s good here?

Weapon X, the origin of how Wolverine got his adamantium skeleton is the undisputed classic of the bunch.

Wolverine & Nick Fury: Scorpio has an Archie Goodwin tale in it and we’re big on Goodwin at the tower of cheap. Howard Chaykin drawing one tale and writing another in it? That’s a bonus.

Wolverine vs. The Punisher also has several interesting creative teams in a big package.

The under the radar book is Wolverine: Logan. That’s a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan collaborating with an Eduardo Risso who’d just finished 100 Bullets. Definitely an interesting pairing. One might say explosive, but that would be a spoiler.

Winging It

Nightwing  Nightwing  New Teen Titans

The  DC Nightwing Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

How long has Dick Grayson been Nightwing? Since Tales of the Teen Titans #44, July 1984. Book 3 of The Judas Contract, to be specific.

Let’s break this sale down by series highlights:

  • Nightwing (’96 – ’09) – Probably most strongly associated with Chuck Dixon / Scott McDaniel / Greg Land
  • Nightwing (’11-’14) – Kyle Higgins / Eddy Barrow
  • Grayson (’14 – ’16) – Tom King / Tim Seely / Mikel Janin; Dick Grayson goes undercover, infiltrating a mysterious international spy organization called “Spyral.” Spies + Wiseguy + Superheroes
  • Nightwing (’16- present)

And from the world of New Teen Titans / Titans:

  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – Marv Wolfman / George Perez / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Eduardo Baretto
  • New Titans (’84-’96) – Wolfman / Tom Grummett
  • Titans (’16-’19) – Dan Abnett / Brett Booth

What’s good? The current Taylor / Redondo run is Top Notch! We highly recommend it and think it starts hitting it’s stride in V. 2.

We also think highly of New Teen Titans. Depending on you talk to, it’s at minimum, good through The Judas Contract and the return of Trigon in the first arc of the DM-only relaunch. We’d probably say you can take it at least through Perez’s return engagement of ~50-61, which is further than the current collections reach.

Or Else?

What If?  What If

The Marvel What If? Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

We have a preference for the original What If, here, but we’d like to point something out to you first. When you go to the series link for the original, toward the top of the page, you’ll see a new navigation feature that’s a little more relevant here. Under the series graphic on the left hand side is a pulldown menu where you can select “Volumes” or “Omnibus.” Volumes being the “normal” sized collections.  We’ll have to have a longer look at how that’s implemented. It might be useful… IF it works.  In this case it only shows the omnibus on sale. Yes, that’s right, there are actually four omnibuses containing ~12 issues each of What If. Only one of them is on sale and that’s the only one that shows up on the Omnibuses page, ergo the Omnibuses page appears to be broken. (Why are you acting surprised?)

So, here’s the link for the “regular” volumes. Here’s the link for the lone omnibus on sale (which is issues #1-12).  And we’ll look at some of the more interesting stuff in the individual volumes, since What If is all over the map. Some of these are going to sound awfully darn familiar, too.  What If seems like a gold mine for pitching your editor!

  • #1 – What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #2 – What If The Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #10 – What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #12 – What If Rick Jones Had Become The Hulk? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #13 – What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today?  (NOPE, no longer collected)
  • #23 – What If The Hulk Had Become a Barbarian? (V. 4)
  • #30 – What If Spider-Man’s Clone Had Lived? (V. 5)
  • #35 – What If Elektra Had Lived? (V.6)
  • #37 – What If The Beast and The Thing Continued to Mutate? (V.6)
  • #43 – What If Conan Were Stranded in the 20th Century? (No longer collected).

We’re not saying this was a try-out book like Marvel Premiere or Showcase, but flash forward a couple decades and some of the topics started turning up nice and regular… and still are.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Thor Modern Epic Collection  Hawkeye  Avengers by Jed MacKay

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced DC Sales?

Wonder Woman New 52   Wonder Woman by Gail Simone  Wonder Woman

We’re still seeing these discounts. It’s a mystery, but they’re there.

Unannounced Indie Sales
Glass Town  The Last Book You'll Ever Read   Nobody's Fool

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America: Sam Wilson; Nightwing; Ghost Rider and The Midnight Sons; Siege; Grendel; Masters of the Universe

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Sam Wilson’s adventure as Captain America (and as The Falcon), Ghost Rider and the Midnight Sons get a price drop, as does Siege. DC puts the discount spotlight on family; Dark Horse cuts prices on Grendel, Masters of the Universe, and Lone Wolf & Cub.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Oh, Captain, My Captain

Captain America & the Falcon: Madbomb  Captain America & the Falcon by Christopher Priest  Captain America: Symbol of Truth

The Marvel Captain America: Sam Wilson Sale runs through Monday, 5/13

This would be Sam Wilson, the former Falcon, in the role as Cap. And really there are two halves to this sale. The Sam-as-Captain America side includes:

Then you’ve got the original series where Sam is merely the Falcon. We’d put the highlights of these offerings as:

  • Captain America: Secret Empire and Captain America: Nomad – These are the classic Steve Englehart / Sal Buscema arcs that most people have near or at the top of the Captain America cannon. You hear a bit of shouting about how this was one of the original “political” comics. It’s true – the subtext of Secret Empire is all about Nixon and Watergate, but filtered through more of a Hydra-type lens. Nomad can be read as Steve Rogers reacting to Watergate, but through the Marvel filter, which involves a certain Skull…
  • Captain America: Madbomb is the first big arc from Jack Kirby’s return to Captain America in the ’70s. Steve and Sam face down a conspiracy of billionaires trying to destabilize the country through bombs that makes people explode with rage and riot. Plus… “Killderby.” Another adventure with subtext that seems to remain relevant.
  • Captain America & The Falcon by Christopher Priest – The Complete Collection – Priest / Bart Sears / Joe Bennett; This is an under the radar run that has Steve and Sam chasing nested conspiracies involving a drug cartel, an “anti-Cap” who might be working for the Navy and MODOK.

Family Ties

Nightwing  Power of Shazam  Jimmy Olsen

The DC Families Sale runs through Monday, 5/13.

Families? Think Superman Family and Batman Family and you’ll be close to the spirit of this sale.  A few things we noticed:

  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams – Their Detective Comics run is still the gold standard for the character.
  • Green Lantern Corps (’86) – The Steve Englehart / Joe Staton run
  • Nightwing – See the Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo volumes at the bottom of the page. We think this is the first time V. 4 has been discounted?
  • Poison Ivy – G. Willow Wilson / Marcio Takara; We think this is the first time V. 2 has been discounted?
  • The Power of Shazam – Jerry Ordway / Peter Krause; Ordway’s updating of the original Captain Marvel and the Fawcett heroes paid a little more attention to the source material than several of the revivals.
  • Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen by Jack Kirby – This is effectively Kirby’s Superman title and part of the Fourth World line. Plus… Don Rickles! (No, really.) More influential than you might realize.
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? – Matt Fraction & Steve Lieber’s hilarious ode to Silver Age Jimmy Olsen, that’s also a legit mystery story and tour of the DCU. Jimmy wakes up hungover and married in Gorilla City and that’s before things start getting strange. We crave a sequel, but the stars would need to align. Highest possible recommendation if you want something fun that also has a plot.

After Midnight

Spirits of Vengeance Ghost Rider Ghost Rider

The Marvel Midnight Sons Sale runs through Monday, 5/13.

Midnight Sons was a supernatural team that ran through some of Marvel’s mid-90s titles like Ghost Rider, Morbius, and, later on, a few issues of Doctor Strange.

Spirits of Vengeance: Rise of the Midnight Sons collects the opening sequence across the various titles.

Midnight Suns is the Ethan Sacks / Luigi Zagaria revival from a couple years back.

Past those volumes, this is largely a Ghost Rider / Morbius sale.

Ghost Rider

As a bonus, the absurdity of Cosmic Ghost Rider:

You can find the first few years of Morbius in Epic format.

Exiting the Dark

Siege: Prelude  Siege  Siege: New Avengers

The Marvel Siege Sale runs through Monday, 5/13.

The Siege in question is the final act of Marvel Dark Reign era.  Dark Reign was an attempt to have an Event without a miniseries running through the middle of it. In the aftermath of Secret Invasion, Norman Osborne consolidates power, replaces the Avengers with an original Thunderbolts-like “Dark Avengers” reporting to him and generally tries to take over the world… and he’s making progress.  Siege has him pushing his luck and attempting to take over Asgard.

The core would be:

  • Siege: Prelude – the run-up, collecting issues across the Marvel landscape
  • Siege – the main story by Brian Bendis / Olivier Coipel

From here, you can plug in other titles as you’re interested. Bendis, the architect here, also penned:

The Unlisted Directory

Grendel Omnibus  Lone Wolf and Cub  Masters of the Universe: Revelation

Multiple Dark Horse sales dropped this week.

Remember Matt Wagner’s Grendel, one of the longest lived indie series out there?

Lone Wolf and Cub – Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima produced one of, possibly THE, best samurai tales… with a twist. Itto Ogami has been framed, along with his infant son, he bides his time working as an assassin while he awaits the opportunity for revenge. Classic series.

Masters of the Universe (otherwise known as He-Man)

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America (It Is Memorial Day Weekend, After All)

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a Captain America sale for Memorial Day Weekend, plus a look at some of the more recently discounted DC titles.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Super Soldier Sale

The Marvel Captain America Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.

A Captain America Sale for Memorial Day? Can’t argue with that.

There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved

So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? Don’t worry, they’ll relaunch him again.

First the usual general advice: The Masterworks and Epic Collections tend to be the best buys, but keep an eye on price points. Some of the newer Epic Collections are pricier and make the Masterworks more appealing.

Some recommendations? Absolutely.  Just the way the collections are currently rolled out, the highlights seem to flow more with the Masterworks than the Epics.

For Silver/Bronze Age adventures,  Captain America Masterworks V. 3 gets you some late Stan Lee/Jack Kirby and the influential Jim Steranko Sequence.  You then jump forward to Masterworks V. 7 for the beginning of the Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era and stay on through Masterworks V.10, which is the return of Jack Kirby and his entirely too timely “Madbomb” arc. (There’s more Kirby in V.11, but Madbomb is a hard act to follow.) There’s also much to recommend with the Mark Gruenwald era which probably peaked with “The Captain” Epic Collection. In general, earlier Gruenwald is better and the art takes a nose dive before his run is over.

Aside from that, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker, first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.

Captain America   Captain America   Captain America

We’ve also been enjoying the current set of Captain America books. Set? Yes, Symbol of Truth (Sam) and Sentinel of Liberty (Steve) start out on separate paths, but eventually converge. Symbol of Truth comes out of the gate hot. Sentinel of Liberty is slowly unspooling a conspiracy retcon and takes a little longer to get moving, but it gets there. We’ve heard some references to these titles being underappreciated, so now’s a decent time to sample.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

Bats and Such

The DC Memorial Day Sale runs through Monday, 5/29.

Yes, this is the same sale as last week. If you scroll down to the “Still on Sale” section, you’ll find that most of what was on last week is still on sale this week… with a couple new manga editions.

But since this is a larger sale and it’s a slow week, we’re going to highlight the more recent releases, several of which haven’t been on sale that many times previously. Most of these collections came out between December and February, so browse the newer material:

Batman / Catwoman   Catwoman: Lonely City   Swamp Thing V.3 - The Parliament of Gears

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: James Gunn’s DC Comics Picks; Falcon and the Winter Soldier; Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has some of James Gunn’s picks discounted, plus Marvel cuts prices on Falcon & The Winter Soldier and Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur.  Film & Television tie-in week?  Could be!

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Kinda Like a TV Sale

The Marvel Falcon and the Winter Soldier Sale runs through Monday, 2/13.

This sale has lot of comics we’ve enjoyed over the years.  The Englehart/Sal Buscema run is an utter classic. Ed Brubaker’s work with Michael Lark, Steve Epting and Butch Guice across Captain America and the Winter Soldier spin-off are also high up there.  But let’s take the road less travelled for the recommendations, since you really ought to know about the above.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth, Vol.1: Homeland by Tochi Onyebuchi and R.B. Silva is something we really enjoyed in the single issues and we think this is the first time the collected edition has been discounted. (6 issues for the price of 1.) This is Sam Wilson as Captain America with the new Falcon at his side. An attempt to stop the smuggling of super soldier serum leads Sam to a human trafficking ring, then to Latveria and then smack dap into the middle of Wakandan immigration policy. An action-forward with brains behind it story that deserves a higher profile.

Captain America & The Falcon by Christoper Priest: The Complete Collection is an under-rated run by Priest with Bart Sears, Joe Bennett and Andrea DiVito. It’s a Priest comic, so if you’re familiar with him, you’re familiar with the style. The overarching plot concerns a rogue element in the military that’s used the Super-Soldier Serum to create an “Anti-Cap”… and, of course, MODOK turns up in the middle of it.

And finally, our standing recommendation for Madbomb, Jack Kirby’s epic about an attempt to overthrow the government using bombs that cause people to lose their minds. Over the top action as only Kirby can do it.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth   Captain America & the Falcon by Christopher Priest   Captain America & the Falcon: Madbomb

Yes, Definitely a TV Sale Kind of Week

The Marvel Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur Sale runs though Monday, 2/13.

This is a lower volume sale than others and simple to handle:

These larger page count editions of the Amy Reeder / Brandon Montclare / Natacha Bustos main series are the better buy.

Moon Girl: Endangered Species is a collection of team-up issues outside the main title.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur   Moon Girl: Endangered Species

We Did Find Evidence of Film Involvement…

The  DC Epic eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 2/13.

A word of caution here (and this is getting to be a regular thing): this sale did not have the final sale prices listed when it first appeared. New pricing has slowly been rolling out over the week, but as we type this, not all the prices have changed. (Example: we do not think $34.99 is the intended sale price for this otherwise fine Batman collection — and maybe it won’t be by the time you’re reading this?)

But, some of the sale pricing has gone through and there is some interesting material in that grouping.

You may recall that James Gunn tweeted out that All-Star Superman is something you might want to read to get a flavor for the direction he wants to move in. This Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely collection is an excellent distillation of all that is good about the Silver Age incarnation of Superman. Pretty much a timeless take, and a good one for Gunn to be focusing on, truth be told. On sale for $5.99.

If you’re looking for a value buy, Legion of Superheroes: The Great Darkness Saga is a good one. This is a 400 page chunk of the iconic Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen Legion run, with a bit of Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick to start it out. That gets you a few issues leading into the actual Great Darkness storyline where Darkseid appears and takes over, plus the immediate aftermath. Highly recommended.

And then going back to Gunn’s recommendations, it just so happens the first four volumes of the Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / John Totleben / Stan Woch Saga of the Swamp Thing $3.99 each. Another all-time classic classic run!

Bonus: we have noticed an unadvertised sale. Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age, Vol. 1 collects the equally iconic original Swamp Thing run by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson for $6.99. Just so you know…

All-Star Superman   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga   Swamp Thing

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Captain America, Nova, Swamp Thing, Legion of Super-Heroes

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Mutants get the “monthly” nod from Marvel, plus Captain America and Nova. Over at DC the Labor Day sale had deals on Swamp Thing and Deadman.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

X-Month

The Marvel Monthly Sale – X-Men: Grand Design & Other Stories Sale runs through Monday, 10/3. (And we see they took the listing on the Deals page down after this morning… but the link still works, so get a jump on it.)

This time around, it’s a mix of side projects and events around the X-Franchise, although you might have guess that from the name.  Some things we’ve enjoyed:

Mystique by Brian K. Vaughan: The Complete Collection –All the way back in 2003, Marvel tried launching a new imprint called “Tsunami.” It didn’t last. The most notable thing about it, historically, was the debut of Runaways. Runaways was one of the first comics to really start getting a pre-Saga/Paper Girls Brian K. Vaughan noticed.  Vaughan, with art by Jorge Lucas/Michael Ryan/Manuel Garcia rotating by arc, also did an espionage-centric Mystique comic. Mystique gets coerced into running black ops for Charles Xavier, sort of a precursor to the current X-Force.

For something a bit more recent, X-Men/Fantastic Four: 4X by Chip Zdarsky and Terry & Rachel Dodson has Professor X offering Franklin Richards a place on Krakoa. Reed and Sue Richards are a little… apprehensive about that and sparks fly. Surely Doctor Doom wouldn’t insinuate himself into the middle of all this? He never has ulterior motives.

And finally, one of the more off the wall X-Men projects: Longshot. This was the first big project from Ann Nocenti and Art Adams. While it isn’t clear that it was originally intended to be part of the X-franchise, it was definitely absorbed into it shortly after the miniseries completed. This is also the debut of Mojo, whom Longshot rebels against.

Mystique   X-Men / Fantastic Four: 4X   Longshot

Time is Relative

The Marvel Captain America: Man out of Time Sale runs through Thursday, 9/8.

Let’s go under the radar for the picks from this eclectic sale, shall we?

Captain America: Forever Allies – now here’s one we haven’t heard mentioned in awhile. Roger Stern and Nick Dragotta weave a legacy tale of Bucky (who was bearing the shield as Captain America at the time) picking up the pieces of last case of the (WWII-era) Young Allies. A continuation of sorts for the Invaders and, since Lady Lotus is involved, of possible interest to reader of the current Busiek/Cinar The Marvels.

The Adventures of Captain America – Another collection that hasn’t hit our radar in some time. This is a sort of “Captain America – Year One” style story with Cap and Bucky back at the onset of WW II by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire. A prestige format release, originally.

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty – Again, a lesser known title. This one was an anthology, vaguely similar to Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, in that it would do one storyline at a time and the storyline could be from any time period. It ran for 12 issues and was mostly written by Mark Waid with Ron Garney being the artist with the most issues under his belt.

All things we’ve spent money on, long ago.

Captain America - Forever Allies   The Adventures of Captain America   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

No, Not a Chevy

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Nova Classic   Nova by Abnett & Lanning

DC Does the Holiday

The DC Labor Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

~2K graphic novels are floating around in this one, so you can spend a lot of time browsing. Some highlights?

Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing run with John Totleben, Steve Bissette, Stan Woch, Rich Veitch and co. for (mostly) $4.99 a volume? Yes, that’s a good deal for landmark run.

Speaking of ’80s classics, there are good prices on some extra long volumes of the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen Legion of Superheroes.  The Great Darkness Saga is only $5.99. That’s the arc with the rep, but their whole run is good and DC needs to get on with reprinting the rest of the Levitz run. (And The Curse is an extra long volume.)

Going back a hair earlier, but keeping the $4.99 vibe going, there’s a 5-volume set of Deadman. The first two volumes are the Neal Adams material that’s the most famous, but you know what? Boston Brand has always been popular with creators and there are another 3 volumes of him hanging out in the ’70s, guest-starring or having a solo feature in the Adventure dollar comics, ending in an ’86 Andrew Helfer/José Luis García-López mini-series.

Swamp Thing   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga   Deadman

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America, Star Wars, Ultimate Spider-Man (and Miles Morales), Suicide Squad and Road to Perdition

This week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales include the majority of Captain America comics, a whole bunch of Star Wars material, Ultimate Spider-Man (and Miles Morales) and the rest of DC’s Memorial Day Sale.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Super Soldier Serum

The Marvel Captain America Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.

There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved

  • Captain America Comics ’40-’50 – The original Golden Age series
  • Tales of Suspense ’59-’68 – Cap’s Silver Age solo stories were in a title shared with Iron Man
  • Captain America ’68-’96 – The original Silver/Bronze Age solo series.
  • Captain America ’98-’02 – The second Mark Waid / Ron Garney run with some Andy Kubert and Lee Weeks art, too. Smaller volumes here, plus the underrated Dan Jurgens run that followed.
  • Captain America ’02-’04 – The Marvel Knights era
  • Captain America ’04-’11 – The main Winter Soldier/Death of Captain America Ed Brubaker run with Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Mike Perkins and Butch Guice in the artistic rotation. Note: you can pick up chunks of it cheaper in these omnibuses
  • Captain America: Reborn – The actual end to the “Death of Captain America” sequence by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice
  • Captain America ’11-’12 – Brubaker sticks around for a relaunch, post-Death/Reborn
  • Captain America ’12-’14 is the Rick Remender run with John Romita, Jr, Carlos Pacheco, Pascal Alixe and Nic Klein in the artistic rotation.
  • All-New Captain America ’14-’15 – Sam Wilson picks up the shield by Rick Remender and Stuart Immonen
  • Captain America: Sam Wilson ’15-17 – Nick Spencer with Daniel Acuna as the primary artist. The seeds of “Secret Empire,” which was a long game, start here.Note: There’s a Complete Collection omnibus set of the Sam Wilson material that’s a bit cheaper.
  • Captain America: Steve Rogers ’16-’17 – The main runup to Secret Empire by Nick Spencer with Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina as the primary artists.
  • While not on sale, you can’t talk about the Spencer era without mentioning Secret Empire, the controversial “Hydra Cap” arc that Spencer’s entire run builds towards.
  • Captain America ’17-’18 – AKA Captain America by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (and Leonardo Romero)
  • Captain America ‘18-’21 – The Ta-Nehisi Coates run with art by Leinil Francis Yu, Adam Kubert, Jason Masters and Leonard Kirk

So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? Don’t worry, they’ll relaunch him again.

First the usual general advice: The Masterworks and Epic Collections tend to be the best buys, but keep an eye on price points. Some of the newer Epic Collections can be $8.99+ and make the Masterworks more appealing.

Some recommendations? Absolutely.  Just the way the collections are currently rolled out, the highlights seem to flow more with the Masterworks than the Epics.

For Silver/Bronze Age adventures,  Captain America Masterworks V. 3 gets you some late Stan Lee/Jack Kirby and the influential Jim Steranko Sequence.  You then jump forward to Masterworks V. 7 for the beginning of the Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era and stay on through Masterworks V.10, which is the return of Jack Kirby and his entirely too timely “Madbomb” arc. (There’s more Kirby in V.11, but Madbomb is a hard act to follow.) There’s also much to recommend with the Mark Gruenwald era which probably peaked with “The Captain” Epic Collection. In general, earlier Gruenwald is better and the art takes a nose dive before his run is over.

Aside from that, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker, first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.

Captain America   Captain America   Captain America

Nothing But Star Wars

The Marvel Star Wars Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.

While not the rock bottom prices of the May the 4th sale, this one does have a wider selection of Star Wars material that isn’t limited to the current Marvel titles.  Some titles that may be of interest:

You get a little more material per volume (and they finished the run) getting the original Marvel Star Wars series with the “A Long Time Ago…” omnibus editions.

A lot of the Epic Collections of the older material have been lumped together under an Epic Collections page, to make finding individual series hard, so refer to that link for the bigger picture, but within that link:

  • Dark Empire – Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy played a BIG part in bringing the Star Wars franchise back to life with their Dark Horse mini-series and it’s sequel. This is the most economical package for the Dark Empire-related titles. It’s a classic.
  • Agent of Empire – John Ostander, Stéphane Roux and Davidé Fabbri did a couple mini-series that effectively answered the question, “what if James Bond worked for The Empire?” Those are the backbone of this collection.
  • Legacy – Far in the Star Wars timeline’s future, the Sith have returned and are stalking the last Skywalker heir. There are three volumes of this fun John Ostrander / Jan Duursema series that might not be cannon anymore, but is better than a lot of things that came after it.

Original Marvel Star Wars   Dark Empire   Agent of Empire

This Time, the Other Peter Isn’t a Clone

The Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.

A Bendis Sale! And Ultimate Spidey might just the the crowning achievement for Brian Bendis in the world of superheroes. (We might like his Daredevil a little more, but Ultimate Spidey and then Miles have had so much impact.)

So let’s break this one down into parts.

  1. The original Ultimate Spider-Man with Mark Bagley, reimaging Peter for a new era. You get a better deal with these larger collections and ignore the omnibus that starts the list.
  2. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, the relaunch with David Lafuente.
  3. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, the Miles Morales version with art by Sara Pichelli, Chris Samnee, David Marquez and Pepe Larraz

Ultimate Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (Miles Morales)

The Other Memorial Day Sale

The DC Memorial Day eBook Sale Part 2 runs through Monday, 5/30.

It would appear that last week’s confusion was caused by Amazon prematurely post this week’s sale last week, then removing it in the US while leaving it online in the UK.  Stranger and stranger.

But this is essentially the back half of the alphabet on sale and worth a browse. Some highlights?

The rock bottom price pick: Dead Boy Detectives for $3.99. Something of a departure for Vertigo as we generally remember it (although there was a similar “Death” volume and My Faith In Frankie wasn’t necessarily far removed), the multi-award-winning Jill Thompson takes the ghost detective children from Sandman and plops them into a manga-style detective comedy.  Yes, Jill is versatile.

From the “Yes, DC published that” division, do you remember Road to Perdition? Yes, before Tom Hanks was a mob enforcer, this was a comic. As usual, these are cataloged strangely.  Listed under “Return to Perdition,” are the original Road to Perdition  and Road to Perdition: On the Road. Both are written by Max Allan Collins with Richard Piers Rayner illustrating Road to Perdition and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Steve Leiber and Joseph Rubenstein sharing duties for On the Road. The actual Return to Perdition, a sequel set in the 1970s by Collins and his Ms. Tree partner, Terry Beatty is list separately (for $3.99). Go figure…

For the uninitiated, Road to Perdition can be likened to Lone Wolf and Cub setting against the backdrop of the Capone era Chicago mob. A mob enforcer goes on the lam with his son after the boss of the local mob outpost orders a hit on his family.  Excellent material that’s largely ignored these days.

And if you’d like some supervillains in your life, the John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell Suicide Squad run is available for $5.99 a pop. This is the run that spun off the films.

Dead Boy Detectives   Road to Perdition   Suicide Squad

 

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Iron Man, Heroes Reborn and DMZ

This week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales include: The Dawn of X segment of X-Men comics, Heroes Reborn (OK, for our purposes, Heroes Return), Iron Man and the DMZ, now as seen on TV.

Side comments about the nature of reprinting cross-over Events included at no extra charge!

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commissions)

X-Hijinks

Marvel’s X-Men: Dawn of X Sale runs through Thursday, 3/20.

To put this in the context of the Hickman era of X, you start out with the House of X / Powers of X mini’s, then you go into the “regular” X-Men family of titles. This post HoX/PoX era is what’s being called “Dawn of X” and it basically stops just before the X of Swords crossover Event.

Dawn of X is a series of trade paperbacks (or digital TPBs for our purposes) that collect the issues of the _entire_ X-Men line of books, to more properly approximate reading the line in release order. Oh, they’ll fudge the exact release order here and there for 2-parters, but you get the idea.

Essentially, particularly early on in the line, the ideas of the X-family floated between titles. Ben Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force cross-pollinated a fair amount, too. We’ve felt that you do get a more out of the X-line by reading it as a whole. It enhances the scope and the worldbuilding aspects. Oh, there’s a dud of an issue here and there, but on the whole, it’s a strong line. (We didn’t think the line was quite as uniformly strong post-X of Swords, but that’s for a different time.)

Marvel has been getting better about going back and collecting stories that bounced between titles (like Hickman’s Avengers saga) in the actual reading order, as opposed tpbs of the individual titles that you need to bounce between. In general, this is a good thing.

We wish we could get you this listed in numerical order, but Amazon’s sorting routines aren’t very good here… but we can give you the list in reverse order! <rolls eyes>

Dawn of X

We’ll Stick with the Return

Marvel’s Heroes Reborn Sale runs through Thursday, 3/24.

This is the 90s experiment when Marvel outsourced some of their titles to Image. Now, for our money, the gems here are from the “Heroes Return” period, when those title came back to Marvel:

Iron Man: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection V. 1 has Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Sean Chen as the primary creative team, re-establishing shell head back in the Marvel Universe. You get some Mandarin, there’s a side trip with Captain America and MODOK. This collects the first portion of one of our favorite Iron Man periods.

And speaking of high points, this sale also has Captain America: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection,  which is the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run resuming. (It had just started, and was abruptly halted, for Heroes Reborn.) A little Hydra, a lost shield… that MODOK tale from Iron Man is also reprinted here (a shared Annual). It’s a solid run.

Iron Man: Heroes Reborn   Captain America Heroes Return

We Forget… Is It Still 2020?

The last couple years really are a blur and this sale is confusing us!

The Marvel Iron Man 2020 and Other Stories Sale runs through Sunday, 3/20.

First off, the Heroes Return sale for Busiek/Chen Iron Man is by far the better deal, so ignore the shorter collections here.

Now here’s a comic we haven’t seen mentioned in quite a while: Iron Man: The Inevitable by Joe Casey and Frazier Irving. We liked that one when it was coming out. Stark tries to rehabilitate the Living Lazer, while Spymaster and the Ghost plot his downfall. Introspection, espionage and then some things blow up. We think the audience may have been expecting more slam-bang when it came out, but we recall this as a slower build up… and it likely benefits from a collected edition.

Iron Man: Iron Monger is the end of the Denny O’Neil/Luke McDonnell era… although McDonnell bows out a little early, so you get some Rich Buckler and Mark Bright starts his run with #200.  And #200 is a helluva ride. O’Neil runs Tony Stark through the ringer and this sees him dragging himself up from the gutters after an alcoholic relapse to deal with Obadiah Stane and his Iron Monger armor. That finale has proven very influential over the years!

Iron Man: The Inevitable   Iron Man: Iron Monger

Feudal Warlords of Manhattan

The Stream DC: DMZ Sale runs through Monday, 3/28.

And yes, that would be the old Vertigo series, DMZ by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. And it’s a good one. The premise? There’s been a militia uprising. The rebels have captured the coast and New Jersey. The US Army holds Long Island. Manhattan is a no-man’s land between the armies. A demilitarized zone, i.e. DMZ. A rookie photojournalist pulls an assignment in the DMZ, but things go pear-shaped and he finds himself stranded… but also with a unique opportunity as an embedded reporter, so he attempts to navigate a strange landscape of neighborhood-based warlords and the strange society that’s popped up around the Manhattanites who could get out… while both armies jockey for position in the shadows.

You can read a few volumes on Comixology Unlimited to test drive it, but if you’re buying, you want the larger deluxe editions for your lowest tab.

DMZ

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Comixology Sales: Black Panther, Falcon and The Winter Soldier/Captain America, Hardware and Neil Gaiman

This week’s Comixology sales include the world of the Black Panther, Falcon & the Winter Soldier, Hardware and the world of Neil Gaiman.

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commissions)

This is going to be a shorter run-through of the sales than normal because of the upcoming absorption of Comixology into the Amazon website.  Comixology’s communications on this have not been particularly helpful.  What do we officially know?

Pre-orders will be honored for next week’s books, if you’re in the US. If you’re not in the US, readers are getting notified their subscriptions are cancelled and they’ll need to buy the new comics off Amazon. (Have a look on  Twitter.  People are NOT happy.)

If the non-US folks are being told to go to Amazon to buy next week’s book, we strongly suspect the Comixology site is offline by Tuesday or Wednesday.

It would be nice if Comixology could actually put a date on their intentions, but ever since they first started teasing the changeover all the way back in September, they’ve been avoiding giving an actual date. Honestly, we didn’t post last week because we weren’t sure if the Comixology site would be up the next day. We’re pretty disappointed in the lack of communication at Amazon, up and down the tree.

So, a link to the Amazon version of the sale will follow the top level Comixology link. The Amazon links will be good longer than the Comixology ones will… at least that’s our understanding.

We’ll see what the landscape looks like next week.   The Amazon site has not been nearly as good at displaying what’s on sale as the Comixology site.

Paid For in Vibranium

The Marvel Black Panther and the World of Wakanda Sale runs through Sunday (2/27). (Amazon link)

The old Marvel Knights run, collected in omnibus form as Black Panther by Christopher Priest: The Complete Collection is our favorite of all the Panther runs.  High adventure and the comic relief of Everett Ross, befuddled diplomat. This run hits just about every note there is to hit. Much (but not all) of the film flows from here… even as the Priest run flows from the original Jungle Action run of Don McGregor and Billy Graham (also worth your time.)

Black Panther by Priest   Panther's Rage

Soldiering On

The Marvel Falcon and the Winter Soldier Sale runs through Thursday, 2/17

There’s a lot to like with this sale.  Love the Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era of Captain America. We’ve always thought the Priest Captain America and the Falcon run was criminally under-rated.  But you know what? Madbomb is just too darn topical not to give it the nod today. Cap and the Falcon track down a conspiracy to topple the government using bombs that drive people crazy and cause riots.

A Cautionary Tale of the Tech Industry

The DC Black History Month Sale runs through Monday, 2/14. (Amazon Link)

Of all the original Milestone titles getting brought back right now, our favorite was Hardware. The opening arc by Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan and J.J. Birch still rings true. Let’s face it, feeling trapped by an unscrupulous employer in the tech industry who lawyered up and wanting you to sign all sorts of paperwork is still a thing.

Always Check the Prices

The Dark Horse Neil Gaiman Sale runs through Monday, 2/14.

And we’re going to leave you on this note to illustrate how weird it can sometimes get swapping between the Comixology and Amazon versions of the sale.  We’re just going to list the prices we’re seeing and suggest if you want some Gaiman, you hit the Amazon version of the sale early.

The Neil Gaiman Library (any volume): Comixology – $12.49 / Amazon – $11.99
Snow, Glass, Apples: Comixology – $5.49 / Amazon – $4.99

Not everything is priced differently, but it’s always been goofy back and forth between the two sites.

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